From NEA Today Winter 2013
Wordle Visual Representation of Ideas Wordle.net
Prezi Fun slide transitions with Powerpoints Prezi.com
Teacher Tube classroom approved videos Teacher Tube.com
Quora post questions and other members debate answers Quora.com
Poll Daddy quick survey and polling tool Polldaddy.com
Think Link turn a picture into a visually appealing cluster of links. Tag people in photo and link to article about them, or cover an infrographic in links for further informer. Post of class webpage. ThinkLink.com
Dipity Create visually appealing interactive timelines. Each even can have an image, and a link to more information. Users can scroll through the timeline and click on the events that interest them. Dipity.com
Skitch Language teachers might this easy photo editing project useful. Load a photo and have the student label everything in it with correct word. Evernote.com Skitch
Wordpress a web page site for students and teachers Wordpress.org
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
Good Reads, Shelfari, LibraryThing - Social Network Sites About Books
Social Network Book Sites are great place to create your own libraries of books you have read, you plan to read and much more. Check them out, explore similarities and differences, create your own library, connect with others, and check out other features.
Good Reads Great place to create book shelves, book reviews, rate books and more - such as creating a collection of quotes from your favorite authors. Use a key word search for favorite quotes. Publish some of your own writing.
Read About a Principal Using Good Reads
Good Reads Great place to create book shelves, book reviews, rate books and more - such as creating a collection of quotes from your favorite authors. Use a key word search for favorite quotes. Publish some of your own writing.
Read About a Principal Using Good Reads
A Librarian Provides Her Take on Good Reads Uses With
Students
What about free music? See
1. Musicloops.com I generally go here first. Well organized. Listen to the quality of the Pachelbel Canon: Musicloops Pachelbel Canon /
2. Music Bakery.com Terrific collection – very wide range
3. Premiumbeat.com Equally good
4. Beatsuite.com Marvellous collection – all styles
5. Soundrangers.com – more oriented to sound effects but also great music.
6. A small free source Free-loops.com (There are many free small samples like this all over the net.)
1. Musicloops.com I generally go here first. Well organized. Listen to the quality of the Pachelbel Canon: Musicloops Pachelbel Canon /
2. Music Bakery.com Terrific collection – very wide range
3. Premiumbeat.com Equally good
4. Beatsuite.com Marvellous collection – all styles
5. Soundrangers.com – more oriented to sound effects but also great music.
6. A small free source Free-loops.com (There are many free small samples like this all over the net.)
Free Images - Creative Commons
It is not legal and copyright laws apply to images used from the internet. For free - creative commons images - no permissions, no legal issues see
Searching
Images Google - Using only Common Acceptable Images
Every Stock Photo Search - Free Photos
Photopin.com
Morgue File.com Photos
Pics4Learning.Com
Public Domain Images - Free
Clippix Free Stock Photos (USF)
Every Stock Photo Search - Free Photos
Photopin.com
Morgue File.com Photos
Pics4Learning.Com
Public Domain Images - Free
Clippix Free Stock Photos (USF)
Microsoft
Office Images Need to avoid the
clip art and animated images for Professional Blog Site.
Even more....
Teaching Ideas :
Using Images
Gadgets and Widgets for Blogs
RECOMMENDED GADGETS FOR YOUR BLOG
Good Reads How to Add Goodreads Widget to Your Blog
Shelfari How to add Shelfari Widget to Your Blog
Where to get Widgets
- TEXT I recommend you make a text gadget with a photo of you, basic information.
- BLOG LIST -- display you favorite list of blogs about children’s literature (starting point, use the recommended children’s lit blogger I provided.
- LINK LIST --- create alist of best websites for supporting children’s literature.
- LABELS By using labels, you create an index of the topics for your posts.
- SEARCH BOX -- this would allow viewers to search your site for specific words in posts.
- SLIDE SHOW Use some special photos of you teaching, your reading, special books – use covers for photos
- Remember to add gadget you go to template select the area of the page, choose add gadget. Notice on the left margin it list basics THERE ARE 27. Go to MORE GADGETS you will see there are 1174! Check them out. SOME TO CHECK ARE BELOW; PS I would avoid gadgets like funny quotes, fish swimming on the page, - less formal for a teacher site.
- Additional gadgets include
- Amazon MP3 Clips
- Flickr photo strEam – Flickr is one of my favorite websites to use with photos
- PICASA PHOTO STREAM - My first favorite for photos.
- PDF Man -- just saw this one, have not tried it – but think it should be a Great One. You could add your PDF files – Author Study and Annotated Bib to your Blog Site! (I only made it through 300, you can check even more.)
Good Reads How to Add Goodreads Widget to Your Blog
Shelfari How to add Shelfari Widget to Your Blog
Where to get Widgets
- WidgetBox.com – The definite go-to place to find and build your own widgets.
- SpringWidgets.com – Another great source for widgets from many of your favorite sites on the web. User reviews and comments help you find the perfect widget for your blog.
- Widgipedia.com – Like the two sites above, wigipedia is a huge and growing collections of widgets of all types and sizes.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Glogster
Glogster Planning Sheet (Google doc)
Glogster is a great place to published items on the web. It is a very creative tool for teachers and students.
See some resources
Glogster in the Classroom
A Teacher Blog - Using Glogster
Tutorial for Glogster, Voicethread and Prezi
A Teacher's Perspective on Using Glogster
Glogster Directions (Google Doc)
Glogster is a great place to published items on the web. It is a very creative tool for teachers and students.
See some resources
Glogster in the Classroom
A Teacher Blog - Using Glogster
Tutorial for Glogster, Voicethread and Prezi
A Teacher's Perspective on Using Glogster
Glogster Directions (Google Doc)
Wordle, Tagxedo, Tagul and other Word Clouds
Many of us know about Wordle - a great place to create Word Clouds that can be used in a variety of ways. See the following sites in working with Wordle.
Wordle - Click to See Web 2.0 Wordle
Tips World Cloud - Wordle
Top Ten Sites Like Wordle
45 Ways to Use Wordle In Class
4 Wordle Alternatives - Explained and Compared
Using Tagxedo in the Classroom (Wiki)
Wordle - Click to See Web 2.0 Wordle
Tips World Cloud - Wordle
Top Ten Sites Like Wordle
45 Ways to Use Wordle In Class
4 Wordle Alternatives - Explained and Compared
Using Tagxedo in the Classroom (Wiki)
Changing the Appearance of Your Blog
Go to Design, Templates, Customize to change features of your blog. You can change each element - background colors, fonts for each part of the blog and much more. Check it out.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
How to Change Navigation on Google Site
Check out this step by step guide for changing navigation on your site.
How to Change Navigation on Your Google Site
The Top Emerging Technologies, Trends and Challenges in Teaching and Learning
-->
The Top Emerging Technologies, Trends, and
Challenges that will have a major impact on teaching,
learning, and creative inquiry in pre-college education over the next five
years K-12 Edition. 2012
For full report see Horizon Report K-12 (2012_
Time-to-Adoption
Horizon: One Year or Less
Cloud Computing
Collaborative Environments
Mobiles and Apps
Tablet Computing
Time-to-Adoption
Horizon: Two to Three Years
Digital Identity
Game-Based Learning
Learning Analytics
Personal Learning Environments
Time-to-Adoption
Horizon: Four to Five Years
Augmented Reality
Natural User Interfaces
Semantic Applications
Tools for Assessing 21st Century Learning Skills
WEBSITE DESIGN MOST COMMON MISTAKES
COMMON MISTAKES WITH
WEB DESIGN
1.
Too much white space.
2.
The site mixes text colors on the page.
3.
The site mixes text sizes on the page or has
different fonts.
4.
The text is centered after inserting a
headline. Needs to be justified.
5.
The site
does not use black text.
6.
Underlined text is not a link. (Book titles need to be italicized.)
7.
Contact information is not available.
8.
There is
no site map or search engine.
9.
Headings
are capitalized.
10. Paragraphs have too much text.
11. The site has three or more fonts styles on a
page
12. We don’t use heading to break up text.
13. We don’t use bullets to highlight organize
information.
14. We don’t spellcheck content of the pages.
15. The home page does not inform visitors of the
content.
16. The site is difficult to read because the text
is too large and pages text is not consistent from page to page.
17. There
is too much or too little text on a page.
18. Links
are not named – instead readers see http://
addresses.
19. Photos
or graphics are large files and take a long time to open. Or photos are
distorted because they have be resized improperly.
20. Sites include animated gifs.
21. The sites navigation is inconsistent or
unclear.
22. The content is not organized.
23. Wrong font choices : Best choices:
Arial, Helvetica,
Verdana [Helvetica comes standard with Apple,
and Arial for Microsoft] Why? Because they are free, mostly come
standard, are very legible at small sizes and are visually similar in
appearance, spacing etc. So, you can trust your layout will look relatively
similar cross platform and browser.
Recommendation highlights from Fast Pivot.com
and Webpages That Suck.com
FONTS FOR WEBPAGES
It's not a good idea to get creative with fonts on your
Web pages. If you stick to the three specs above, or something quite similar,
your pages will look equally good for all your users, regardless of the
operating system they use.
For the body text on the Web page
(e.g. photo captions, navigation links, the main text), choose a
classification. The standard choice is sans-serif because it is the
easiest to read on a computer screen (while serif is easiest to read in printed
material).
ARIAL
AND VERDANA
- Helvetica,
Helvetica Neue, Arial
Helvetica was created by Swiss designers 50 years ago, Helvetica is one of the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Many well-known companies like American Airlines, Lufthansa, Toyota chose this font in their branding. There were so many variations of Helvetica that in 1983 Linotype released Helvetica Neue by redrawing the entire Helvetica family in a more structurally organized fashion. Many consider Arial, designed almost 30 years after Helvetica, to be a cheap imitation of Helvetica. But it turns out that Arial has more similarities with Univers than Helvetica.
- Verdana
was designed specifically for Microsoft in 1996 with a purpose of being
readable at small sizes on a screen. The absence of serifs, wide
proportions and loose letter-spacing make this font extremely legible for
web sites.
1. If you have no idea about fonts,
how they translate to your web page, or how they will affect your visitors,
then you should definitely stick with a
san serif font. The reason for this is that these fonts are the most
legible and provide the best readability for visitors in a low resolution
atmosphere. Don’t take risks with your fonts, go generic and use a sans serif font. Your visitors will
thank you for it and your sales will not suffer from it.
2. Simple is Safe Again, don’t let yourself
get carried away with your fonts and designs. Instead, keep the thought in mind
that simple is safe. If you want to be bold and brazen in your website design
then don’t take that route with your fonts. Keep it simple, basic, and easy to
read, and you will benefit significantly more than if you try to mix it up.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
ADDING AND USING IMAGES ON SITES
Explanation of Google Search for Images to use that are not copyright protected.
Google Search for Creative Commons Images (text)
You Tube Tutorial Google Search for Images Creative Commons
Warning: Logos from Colleges and Universities are copyright protected. You may not use the FGCU logo on sites.
Richard Byrne Free Tech for Teachers:Everystock photos 9 Place to Fine Creative Commons Images http://photopin.com/
Royalty Free Images for Teachers http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/?p=69 http://www.morguefile.com/archive Search terms - children reading, books, class, technology, reading, writing, http://www.edupic.net/lang_pics.htm http://www.pics4learning.com/ http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/ http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic98.htm
Monday, February 11, 2013
What Should Tomorrow's Classroom Look Like?
Excerpt from Digitally Speaking.pbworks.com (two middle school teachers)
What
will our world look like in 2020?
- more diversified population
- higher tech and more evenly distributed
- intellectual capacity more distributed
- continuing issues with war, famine and environmental issues
- Local economy will be more urban, strong, high tech, more dense and cosmopolitan.
- greater competition from around the world
- ease of travel between countries, more mobile, “blurred country borders”
- live longer, more healthy, work longer
- speaking and communicating in a language other than English
- economy more service industry related
- more well-rounded culture
- Technology is key to society. Current training is not sufficient.
- We could lose our economic edge.
What
will a world-class, globally-competitive graduate need to know and be able to
do?
- continue skill acquisition (lifelong)
- ability to communicate, strong interpersonal communications skills, reach out to diverse populations
- critical thinking skills, ability to validate information
- higher level thinkers, ability to work as a team
- understand what the “global economy” is and how it is going to impact students
- ability to bring disparate subjects together to understand the system (knowledge integration)
- sound basic liberal arts education (foundation)
- collaborate in a multi-cultural environment; global teaming
- higher proficiency in a specialized area, ability to adapt
- multi-cultural fluency (language, culture, history and government)
- having the capacity to think about other cultures and how they live
(Wake Education Partnership, "2008
Education Forum Results." E-mail to 'author'.28 Feb 2008.)
Translating Tomorrow
into Today’s Classroom:
Easily
the greatest struggle that educators face in today's day and age is properly
preparing students for a future that is poorly defined yet rapidly changing and
increasingly borderless. While most educators, parents and business
leaders know that something must change, we often struggle to imagine what
those changes might look like.
Thankfully,
leading thinkers on teaching and learning are beginning to tackle this question
in a very structured and systematic way. In a 2008 post on his blog, (http://tinyurl.com/2pus42) Will Richardson---widely
recognized as one of America's most progressive
educational thinkers---worked to define the kinds of skills that would be
necessary for students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected
world. He wrote:
Our kids’ futures will
require them to be:
- Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
- More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
- More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
- Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
- More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
- Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
- More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
- Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Want to Try Out a Wiki with Student? Want to Create a Wiki that Provides Tutorials for Others?
A great place to start to understand and use Wiki's.
Teacher Training Video PB Wiki
Teacher Training Video PB Wiki
Monday, February 4, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Web 2.0 Mindmaps
A Must See integrates mindmapping with websites, videos, journals, quizzes on topics and more!
Instagrok
Instagrok
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